


Time After Time

by namizaela



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28471794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namizaela/pseuds/namizaela
Summary: Sadie and John’s insistence on checking on him is confusing, to say the least. After all, they should be as affected by the whole thing as he is—Sadie was Arthur’s closest friend, and John—well, as far as anyone in the gang was concerned, he and Arthur were family. He isn’t sure what either of them said to Arthur’s grave. He could guess if he wanted to. But right now, Charles wants nothing more than a clear mind.A clear mind for a fresh start. Isn’t this what this trip is all about?Haunted by memories, Charles tries to travel east. But he can never quite make it there. (Sequel toA Kind of Paradise, but can be read as a standalone.)
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith, Charles Smith & John Marston, Charles Smith & Sadie Adler
Comments: 15
Kudos: 37
Collections: A Kind of Paradise





	Time After Time

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is a sequel to my other fic, _A Kind of Paradise_. If you haven't read that, all you really need to read is the last chapter. And if you don't want to do that, all you need to know is that Charles, John, and Sadie agree to visit Arthur's grave together. Charles made matching bracelets for him and Arthur and he decides to leave them there as a way of moving on from Arthur's death. This fic takes place right after that trip.

Already the image of the grave is fading _—_ quickly, quicker than Charles could have ever expected _—_ from his mind. It hasn’t even been a day since they’d visited it. It’s barely been an hour.

He knows that Sadie and John have been throwing worried glances over their shoulders at him ever since they decided to make the trip. He was the one to suggest that they all go to the grave in the first place, during the strange, dreamlike night they’d spent together before killing Micah, and they’d both agreed, perhaps glad that they could all finally put this whole business to rest. And they had. Not even an hour ago, all three of them knelt down by Arthur’s headstone and said their final goodbyes. Sadie and John watched Charles place a nearby rock over the two remaining possessions he had of him and Arthur: matching bracelets that he’d made for them, now with a permanent home by the grave. Without his bracelet Charles’s wrist feels strange and bare.

“Charles?” John asks, shifting around on his horse to look at him. “You alright?”

“Fine, John.”

“Wound botherin’ you?” Sadie asks in her raspy voice, trying to sound casual. “God knows mine is still damn sore.”

Charles sighs. “No,” he says, “I feel fine. I’ve done nothing but sit around for two months and heal before even thinking about getting on a horse.”

“I know. The ranch is barely hanging on without you,” John jokes. Then after chuckling to himself he rubs the back of his neck and stares at the reins. Sadie gives one last look at Charles before she too turns her eyes back on the road, squinting against the summer heat.

Sadie and John’s insistence on checking on him is confusing, to say the least. After all, they should be as affected by the whole thing as he is _—_ Sadie was Arthur’s closest friend, and John _—_ well, as far as anyone in the gang was concerned, he and Arthur were family. He isn’t sure what either of them said to Arthur’s grave. He could guess if he wanted to. But right now, Charles wants nothing more than a clear mind.

A clear mind for a fresh start. Isn’t this what this trip is all about?

* * *

Dutch leads Charles around a bend in the path through the foggy green woods, revealing a collection of tents gathered in a group. A few people look up: a tall, lanky man with stringy black hair, a few girls sitting around a campfire, even someone who looks like a priest.

“Everyone,” Dutch says, “this here’s a new recruit: Charles Smith. I trust you’ll all find him as useful of a companion as I do. Susan, would you show him to somewhere where he can stay?”

A greying woman comes up to him with a tight smile, nodding at Dutch. “Let’s see where we can fit you in.”

Charles lets himself be led past most of the tents and to a small one, right next to a supply wagon that has a cot tucked against it, taking advantage of the shelter.  _ At least these people are resourceful _ , he thinks. It’s a good sign. 

The woman points to a pile of blankets on the ground and says, “Here we are. That’s as good as it’s going to get for now, I’m afraid.”

He chuckles and waves a hand to dismiss what she just said. “I’ve slept on much worse,” he says. “Thank you.” His eyes wander around camp, where people look at him curiously, some of them giving him a nod or a wave of acknowledgement. Then he looks at the neighboring cot again. “Who sleeps there?”

“On the bed?” she asks. “Oh, that’s Arthur. He’s out on some job now, but you’ll meet him soon enough. As you will everyone else, I guess.” She pauses and says, “D’you want something to clean up that mess on your face?”

Charles instinctively touches his fingers to his cheeks and they come back wet with blood. He’s forgotten the events of the past hour _—_ namely, the fact that he saw a group of men aiming to attack the man he now knows as Dutch, stepped in to stop them, and received a few punches to the face in return. His nose probably isn’t broken, but he isn’t a pretty sight. “Sure,” he tells her, and attempts a smile. “Just something to wipe up the blood is fine.”

She goes off somewhere else in camp, and after a few minutes pass she comes back with a damp rag. He thanks her and sits down to clean his face, relishing the feeling of the cool cloth on his skin. Dutch’s camp is quiet at first glance, but he sees that most of the members are just content to work together in silence. Most of them are doing some sort of menial chore, not just the women _—_ which is a surprise too, that women live in this supposed gang of robbers and killers. Dutch had used euphemism after euphemism while leading him to the camp, but Charles has been around long enough to know that these people don’t get the money to survive by asking nicely.

As Charles wipes off more of the blood on his face, he sees a man walking over in his direction, and a few feet away the man stops and narrows his eyes at him. 

“You the new recruit?”

His voice is gravelly and accented, with a lazy drawl that meanders through the question. He stands with his weight on one leg and his hands by his gun belt. Charles can see that it’s the kind of pose that appears relaxed but is ready to act at the first sign of danger. And in this case, it looks like Charles is the danger. 

“I am,” he says. “Name’s Charles Smith. Are you Arthur?”

The man huffs a laugh and his posture loosens a little more. He rubs his stubble, which is patchy and unkempt, and then rests his hand on his hip. “I see you already heard of me. Yeah, I’m Arthur. Arthur Morgan.” He glances at Charles’s bloody face and raises an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me Dutch beat you up and forced you to come here.”

Charles laughs and says, “No, not at all. I saw some people fixing to rob him, so I stepped in to help. Got a few punches thrown my way in the process.”

“Yeah, that makes more sense,” Arthur says. “Dutch ain’t the type for needless violence, at least if he can help it...although he has been kinda desperate for more guns lately. Maybe I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Charles isn't sure if he’s supposed to take the joke seriously or not, so he just smiles and doesn’t say anything. Eventually Arthur gives him a wave and goes off to do something else.

The rest of the afternoon he spends cleaning himself up and carefully observing the happenings around camp. Some people come up to him and introduce themselves _—_ mostly the women, but a few men sidle up to him and shake his hand as well. He gets the sense that although people in camp welcome new additions, they hope that he’s one of the last. Maybe money’s tight, which wouldn’t surprise him, given that the law is getting stronger everywhere except out west. It doesn’t matter. Give him a few days, and he’ll make sure to prove himself useful.

When one of the members yells out that dinner is ready, Charles approaches the stew pot and hangs unsurely around the outskirts of the crowd of people getting their food. Then someone hands him a bowl full of rich-smelling stew _—_ it’s Arthur, the man from before.

Before Charles can respond, Arthur gives him a nod and a smile. “I guess it takes time gettin’ used to,” he says. “All of this.”

He’s right, even if Charles is too polite to agree with him. This isn’t the first time that Charles has leapt headfirst into a new life and he’s sure it won’t be the last, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The one thing that he’s sure of is that these people, whoever they are, seem different from everyone else he’s met. Maybe he would be a fool to turn them away. Maybe they would be kind.

Charles takes the bowl of stew, its warmth seeping into his palms. “I’ll be okay,” he tells Arthur. In the end, he always is.

* * *

The three of them steer their horses around a narrow bend in the mountain path and down into a grouping of hills. The sun beats down, hot and stifling, and Charles wipes the sweat off of his temples. Further down the path there is a crossroads with a wooden post standing crookedly out of the ground.

John eyes the sign. “Looks like one road leads to Valentine, and one leads to Annesburg.”

“I reckon Valentine’s closer,” Sadie says. Then a thoughtful look appears on her face and she says, “Although, Annesburg might have more bounties for me to take care of.”

“You and your bounties,” John chuckles. “Abigail would have my hide if I started back up with them again.”

Sadie grins. “I ain’t blaming her.” 

John turns around in the saddle. “How about you, Charles? Where are you planning on heading?”

Charles is silent for a moment before saying, “East.” He pauses and then says, “I mean, I didn’t actually have anywhere in mind. But I want to go east.”

“Why east?” Sadie asks. 

Charles just shrugs and hopes that’s a good enough answer. Truthfully, he doesn’t know why himself _—_ just that when he thinks about where he wants to be in a month from now, he pictures the cool riverbank of the Kamassa River, or the busy harbor of Van Horn. He figures that there’s no harm in letting his feelings dictate where he should go, especially since there’s nothing else enticing him in any particular direction. 

John breaks the silence. “Well, I have to go to Annesburg. There’s a family there Abigail and I keep in touch with and she wants me to bring ‘em something she made.”

“That’s a long way away,” Charles says. 

“It’s not too bad on horseback.” John absentmindedly scratches the back of his horse’s neck and looks around at them. “But after that, I’ll take a train back to the ranch. You two are free to come with me if you want.”

It’s an empty offer. When the time came for them to make the trip to Arthur’s grave, Sadie and Charles had spent the evening before packing all of their meager belongings onto their horses, leaving nothing of theirs behind. In the morning the attic, stripped of most signs of life, looked empty and cold. Abigail took one look at the room and hugged Charles as tightly as she could manage. Jack, too, gave Charles a quick and awkward embrace that was so reminiscent of John that he stifled a smile. That was their way of saying goodbye. 

“It’s alright,” Charles says. “I think it’s time for me to go find some other place to stay.”

“Sadie?”

“I think so too,” she says. “You know I ain’t ever stayed in one place for long anyways. Maybe Charles and I could head to Valentine, earn some cash together. You up for bounties?”

She glances at Charles and he gives her a nod of agreement. Sadie is trustworthy and capable, a good companion to have, and with the kind of life they lead two is better than one. Normally he wouldn’t describe bounty hunting as being his type of work, but from what Sadie described it’s undeniable that there’s money in it. And if he wants to travel, Charles needs money.

“Sounds good to me,” he says, “I’m sure there’s something there.”

“I thought you wanted to go east? Valentine’s west of here.”

He looks at her and says, “I don’t mind. I can go east once I get enough money.”

The three of them sit on their horses and meet each other’s eyes, and since Charles gets the feeling that neither John nor Sadie want to be the first to say goodbye, he speaks up. “Thank you for coming with me to visit Arthur,” he says. “The fact that you two were there made me, uh, glad.”

Immediately John grips his reins and nods, not looking Charles in the eye. “Sure. Of course I was gonna come.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised you invited me,” Sadie says. Her mouth is twisted in a wry smile. “But I’m glad I joined you.”

“You can always write to me if you need anything,” John says after a few seconds of silence. “Both of you. I mean, I would be dead if it weren’t for you two. I ain’t sure how to repay that kinda debt.”

When he hears that Charles frowns. “None of that, John. We don’t need to owe each other.”

John pauses, looks at him, and gives him a little half-smile. “I guess not,” he says. His gaze shifts to Sadie and then back at Charles. “Then, I’ll see the two of you around.”

He pulls at the reins and turns his back on them. As John spurs his horse in the direction of Annesburg, Sadie and Charles raise their hands in farewell. Privately, Charles has always found John too unsure for his own good _—_ afraid of commitment yet afraid of inaction too _—_ but now he watches as John sits tall in the saddle and doesn’t look back. Something has changed, and whatever it is slipped right by Charles as quietly as the night. 

For a second he wonders what Arthur would think of all this. But it’s a useless thought, so instead of dwelling on it Charles turns to Sadie and takes up the reins again.

“Come on,” he tells her. “Let’s see how close we can get to Valentine before sundown.”

After days filled with endless riding, the long path to Valentine seems to stretch on forever. The mountains soon turn into rolling green fields, which continue for hours, never varying too much in altitude or color. Occasionally a group of deer or pheasants appear in the grass, but even those have become rarer as the years passed. The new century seems to have brought an enthusiasm for hunting along with it. 

When the sun sinks low enough in the sky that riding becomes too much of a challenge, Charles and Sadie set up camp in the thick of Cumberland Forest, where the warm crackling of their campfire doesn’t disturb anything else but the wildlife. Sadie cuts open two cans of salted meat and heats them up, then passes one to Charles. They eat in companionable silence. It’s never been just the two of them before _—_ there’s always been either Arthur or John, and now neither are here. 

“So,” Charles says, “tell me about these bounties.”

Sadie grins and chews on another piece of gristly meat. “They’re legal. And damn easier than robbin’ a bank, that’s for sure.”

“I guess it’s easier when the law’s on your side, huh?”

“‘Course it’s easier,” she says. “Plus these fools usually ain’t smart or tough enough to warrant the price on their heads anyway. Not that I’m complainin’.”

Charles smiles to himself. Sadie never bothers to sugarcoat things, but compared to the mindless bluster spouting from half the people Charles has had to interact with when he took up street fighting, her words are refreshing. “Are bounties what you’ve been doing all these years?”

“That, and the occasional odd job. You know, protecting station wagons, escorting people from town to town. That sort of thing.”

He hums and pokes the campfire with a nearby stick. “Sounds like you’ve been busy.”

Sadie sighs and shakes her head. She crushes her can of salted meat, now empty, and tosses it into the fire, where it wilts amidst the flames. “Not busy,” she says, “just...wanderin’.” Then she changes the subject. “What have you been up to? Fell in with another gang?”

Charles scoffs out of surprise. “Another gang? Of course not. Who would I even join?”

“The Del Lobos, or _—_ ” Sadie pauses, then huffs a laugh. “I guess I see your point. The only gangs left are ones I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.” 

He nods in agreement. “I ran it alone,” he says, “and a couple years ago I took up prize fighting in Saint Denis. I did that until I met John, and _—_ well, you know the rest.”

“Prize fighting?” Sadie stares at him like he’d admitted he’d taken up competitive ice skating. “I never pegged you as the type to show off like that.”

Thinking back to the miserable months he spent in Saint Denis, Charles remembers how he made enough money to get by on: performing well enough in fights to make a name for himself, then using that name as leverage. It was dirty, humiliating work, but he got paid handsomely for every fight he lost.

“Well, I wasn’t winning the fights,” he tells Sadie. “Mostly I was throwing them.”

Her eyes grow even wider. “And you were okay with that?”

Charles laughs and tosses his empty can into the fire. He reaches to twist his bracelet around on his wrist, but his fingers touch bare skin and he remembers that he’d left the bracelets on the mountain. “You know, John asked me the exact same thing.”

There’s a pause, then Sadie’s expression melts into a fond smile. “I ain’t surprised. Marston’s always been hung up about pride.”

“Maybe,” Charles says. That sounds like the John he knew, the one from eight years ago, but he figures things have changed now. From the way things are looking, John will never return to the outlaw life again _—_ and honestly, he could say the same about them all. Pride is a thing of the past, as is idealism. They’re too old for those things now.

Sadie shifts so that she’s propped up by one arm. “Speakin’ of John...” she starts, and turns her gaze to the flames. “I’m happy for him, you know? Don’t usually see people like us havin’ nice endings.”

She’s right, he thinks. Sometimes he forgets that other people lead different lives than his own, ones that don’t involve sleeping on the hard dirt road and carrying a gun around so much that it becomes another limb. John is a fluke, one of the lucky few who managed to escape and start a peaceful life. 

Looking at the moon hanging over the open plains of wheatgrass, Charles thinks,  _ too bad so many people had to die for him to get it. _

* * *

Charles is about to walk into Valentine’s saloon when out of the corner of his eye he sees Arthur, heading up the street on his horse. He waves to him and Arthur meets his eyes, waves back, and guides his horse over.

“Headin’ in for a drink?” Arthur says, gesturing to the saloon. There are still fading green and yellow bruises on his cheekbone from the bar fight they’d got into only a week before, which everyone in the gang soon found out about because of the dirty looks some of them were getting from the townspeople.

“I am,” Charles says. At Arthur’s raised eyebrow he smiles. “I figure that if I keep quiet enough the barkeep might let me stay and have a couple.”

“Yeah, you might as well try your luck. It ain’t like there’s anywhere else to get a decent drink around here anyway.”

Charles looks over to the saloon and says, “Decent might be stretching it.” His eyes glance at Arthur’s face and he pauses. “You...want to join me?”

Arthur looks a little surprised but then dips his head with a smile. “Well, why not. Lead the way, Charles.”

They step into the saloon and are immediately subject to the glare of the barkeep. “Now, don’t you two _—_ ”

“Alright, alright,” Arthur grumbles. He leans on the bar and Charles joins him. “Don’t worry, me and my friend here won’t further disturb the peace of your lovely little town.”

Charles hides his surprise at the word  _ friend _ , and instead puts change down on the counter to buy a couple of drinks. “First round’s on me,” he tells Arthur. 

“Why, thank you,” Arthur says. “Lemme get the next one, then.”

“There’ll be a next one?”

“What, you mean you’re not lookin’ to get piss drunk at _—_ ” Arthur checks his pocket watch “ _—_ half past noon?”

The question makes Charles smile. “Not if I can help it.”

The barkeep begrudgingly puts two whiskeys down in front of them and takes Charles’s money. Arthur nods at him and immediately downs half his drink in one fell swoop, scrunching his face up at the burn of the alcohol. Charles watches with amusement. “Seems like you don’t care to savor it.”

Arthur snorts and says, “Savorin’ things ain’t exactly a priority of mine at the moment.”

“Hm,” Charles says, swirling around his own drink in the glass. “Everything alright with you?”

Pausing mid-sip, Arthur looks at him. “How you mean?”

Privately Charles thinks of the conversation he’d overheard in camp, where Tilly and the rest of the girls gossiped about someone named Mary, and how Arthur had gone to visit her after who knows how many years. But with Arthur he chooses his words carefully. “The past few weeks have been hard on all of us,” he says. “All the running around, moving camp…”

“Sure,” Arthur says. He drains the rest of his whiskey. “Your hand feelin’ better, by the way?”

“My hand?” Charles hasn’t even thought about the burn he got at Blackwater for at least a week. It strikes him as strange that Arthur’s been asking about him so much _—_ not in a bad way, but in a way that makes him wonder what made him different from everyone else in the gang. 

Charles holds his palm out. “It’s all healed up. No scarring, either.”

Arthur takes his hand and turns it a bit, nodding thoughtfully. “Yeah, looks pretty good to me.” After a second he drops it, instead rubbing the back of his neck and turning his gaze towards the bar. “Uh, sorry. You probably just wanted me to look at it. Your hand, I mean.”

Once he collects himself, Charles huffs a laugh. “It’s alright,” he says, then decides to change the subject. It might be the drink talking, but he feels a little bolder now, and his curiosity starts to get the better of him. “I, uh, heard from some of the girls that you met this woman in town.”

Immediately Arthur groans and rubs his face in exasperation. “Christsakes, not you too. Does everybody gotta know my business?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Charles says, holding up his hands defensively. “Guess I’m just wondering, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, get in line.” A few seconds pass, and Arthur heaves a sign, dropping two coins on the counter for another round with a clink. “Might as well have another round if I’m gonna tell you all this.”

Trying not to appear too enthusiastic, Charles nods and sips his drink. The barkeep sidles over and takes their money, his frown growing less severe. It seems like everyone can be bought, in one way or another.

Soon their drinks come, and Arthur tells him a short, gruff version of what Charles understands to be the failed romance between him and Mary. It’s hard to tell what’s true and what’s being left out _—_ since he’s sure there’s more Arthur chooses not to tell him in order to save face _—_ but for now he just absorbs the story. The surrounding noise in the saloon gets louder as the sun creeps closer to the horizon, and by the time Arthur finishes both of their drinks have been long emptied.

“Anyway,” Arthur says, “it’s all in the past now. She and I are just friends.” 

Charles shrugs. “Still, the whole thing sounds more stressful than anything. I’m glad I never courted a woman like her.”

“You mean you’ve met better?”

“Actually _—_ ” he pauses and looks down at the bar “ _—_ I haven’t been in a relationship.”

At the confession, Arthur raises an eyebrow. “Never? And here I thought the ladies would be fallin’ at your feet.”

It’s hard to tell if he’s being serious, but in any case Charles finds it strange that he would think that. For the second time that evening, he wonders what separates himself from the rest of the gang.  _ In any case, even if Arthur’s right,  _ Charles thinks wryly,  _ my idea of a relationship doesn’t involve women as much as he would think _ . 

In the end he just laughs a little. “I think you might be overestimating me.”

But despite his gentle protest, privately he feels the same about Arthur: that even though he leads this sort of life, there would be a woman by his side. Even John manages it _—_ although not well _—_ and Arthur looks a sight more attractive than most of the men in the gang. Charles isn’t the type to say these things, but as the slanting rays of dusky light pass through the windows and illuminate the both of them, he looks at Arthur and the thought solidifies in his mind. 

“Well,” Arthur says, breaking the silence, “you still got plenty of time to find someone. Settle down. If that’s what you want, I mean.”

“I guess it is.” 

A few minutes pass where neither of them say anything. Then Arthur reaches over and squeezes Charles’s shoulder. 

“Come on,” he says. “We’ve dawdled enough. You wanna head back to camp?”

After a moment Charles nods and agrees. He follows Arthur out of the saloon and as he does so the sight of Arthur silhouetted against the sunlight strikes him like he’s seeing it for the first time. In the second where Arthur’s back is turned to him, a soft heat rises in his stomach, clinging onto him as he mounts his horse, making his cheeks flush with a tingling intensity. There’s no point focusing on it now _—_ he doesn't want to think about what it means. 

When Arthur gives him a smile he manages to smile back, and together they ride west, back to camp.

* * *

It’s late in the morning when Sadie and Charles arrive in Valentine. Not wanting to waste any time, they hitch their horses right outside the sheriff’s office and saunter in. Eight years ago this would have been a death sentence, but now neither the sheriff nor his deputy bat an eye. People like them probably come in more often than criminals nowadays, if Charles had to guess. The time where bounty hunters would be overrun by outlaws has passed _—_ now it’s more likely to be the opposite.

Without much fuss, the sheriff hands them a poster of some man who’d been on the run for the past few months, who got in trouble with the law for reselling stolen horses. Rumor is he’s camped out near Wallace Station. The poster says that he’s wanted only alive, and the sheriff explains that some of the people he’s robbed from need to know where he’s sold their horses to. With that information out of the way, Sadie and Charles ride out to find him. They’re in and out of Valentine in less than an hour.

“Dumb bastard,” Sadie says once they’re a mile or so away from Valentine. “Everyone knows you gotta use a fence if you don’t want to get caught.”

Charles shrugs and spurs on Falmouth. “Maybe he’s new to this. Anyway, how do  _ you _ know that? I don’t think you ever did any robbery under Dutch.”

“Yeah, pretty sure all I did was murder,” she says, which makes Charles laugh. “I heard Dutch and Arthur _—_ ” she pauses. He raises an eyebrow at her. “Uh, I heard Dutch talkin’ about it.”

For a second Charles fails to catch the correction she makes, but when he does he almost doesn’t believe it. Since when has Sadie been the kind of person to avoid things? He glances at her and frowns. “You can say his name, you know.”

Sadie adjusts the brim of her hat and looks at the road ahead. “‘Course I know that.” Her voice is flippant but tight at the same time, and as much as Charles wants to disagree with her, he doesn’t.

  
  


The rest of the ride is spent in silence, leaving him to speculate about what they will find at the end of the road. He’s never caught criminals before _—_ he’s never been on this side of the law. Still, even when he’d run under Dutch, it was out of necessity. It wasn’t because he wanted to. What he wanted all those years ago had been something different.

“Charles?” Sadie says. He looks up and sees Wallace Station a few feet away. “We better look around.”

They slow down their horses and ride up to a teenage boy sweeping the area in front of the entrance. “You seen a tall, skinny man around here?” Sadie asks. She brandishes the bounty poster and points to the drawing of the horse thief. “We’re tryin’ to have a chat with him.”

The boy peers at the poster for a second. If he knows they’re bounty hunters he doesn’t seem fazed. “Reckon I just saw him inside,” he says, pointing at the station.

Charles glances at Sadie. He makes sure all of his guns are loaded, and she takes out her lasso, testing the weight in her hand. They hitch their horses and dismount, making their way to the station doors.

As soon as Charles steps into the shadowy interior, he sees their target. True to the description, he’s a wiry man, and he bears a striking resemblance to the illustration on the bounty poster. There are a few other people in the station as well, all reading the newspaper or biding time until their train comes. The man behind the counter looks expectantly at them. He seems to be the owner of this station, or at least the person who runs the store inside the station. 

Charles makes a mental note to have this encounter be as peaceful as possible, but as soon as he thinks that the bounty looks between him and Sadie with shifting eyes and rises to his feet. 

He backs away, but Sadie steps closer and turns the safety off of her gun with a click. Charles does the same. 

Without another word, the bounty vaults over the counter, pushing the man behind it to the ground, and whips out a pistol. “You’ll never take me alive!”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sadie mutters, then cocks her weapon. “Charles, cut off the entrance!”

The five other people in the room, previously calm, erupt into frightened murmurs. One woman screams and clings onto the man next to her. There’s no time to calm them. Charles runs and blocks the door, pulling out his gun and aiming it at the counter.

Sadie launches herself at the man and slams him onto the floor, trying to wrestle the gun out of his hand. “Just _—_ fuck _—_ ” she grunts, straining to pin him down.

“You okay?” Charles yells over the din. The counter blocks his view, and he can’t move closer because he’s guarding the entrance. “Sadie?”

Before he can hear a response, the man lifts Sadie up by the collar and whacks her across the jaw, making her cry out in pain. Still holding onto her, he fumbles around for his gun, and Charles’s stomach drops. He needs to make a move, and quick.

The bounty points his gun at Sadie’s head. Charles can see the tremble in his trigger finger _—_ which is why, after a split second decision, Charles pulls his own gun out and fires.

The gunshot rings in his ears for a second, enough to take a breath and then let it out again. After a moment he steps forward and looks behind the counter. “Sadie?” he asks. “Are you alright?”

She looks back at him and spits out a bloody tooth. “Fine. But look at our bounty.”

A pool of blood slowly stains the wooden floor. The bullet hadn’t gone through a limb, it had gone through the man’s back, and it had clearly been lethal.

Charles had killed him.

“It ain’t your fault,” Sadie says as he pulls her to her feet. “You probably saved my life.”

Charles is about to respond when he realizes that everyone else in the station is looking at them with ashen faces. There is hot, sticky blood on Charles’s hands that he belatedly tries to hide. One man, who he realizes is the person behind the counter from earlier, raises a shaking finger. “You _—_ you killed that man,” he says. “You got blood all over my floorboards.”

Sadie scoffs and leans on the counter. “What, you want us to mop it up for you?”

“ _ Sadie, _ ” Charles hisses, then turns his attention to the man. “Is this your building?” he asks. Better to keep it peaceful.

“Of course this is my building,” he snaps. “No one’s going to want to come here now that you two have made a scene! I might as well say goodbye to my business.”

“And what are we supposed to do about it?” Sadie drawls.

“Pay for it!”

Charles looks at the dead body behind the counter. They probably wouldn’t get the full reward for it, if any reward at all, yet the owner has a point _—_ both the present and future damage to the station is largely his and Sadie’s fault. Well, his fault. Sadie wasn’t the one who shot the gun.

“We don’t have money right now,” Charles says evenly. Already the owner bristles, but he continues: “But we’ll pay. Just let us stop by Valentine, and I’ll come back with whatever you need.”

“Charles, you ain’t gotta _—_ ”

“It’s the right thing to do,” he reminds her. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the dead body, the skin rapidly turning pale and splotchy, and something in his stomach twists into a knot. He fumbles with his gun, taking it out of its holster, and offers it to the owner. “Here. So that you’ll be sure I’ll come back.”

One appraising look later and the owner takes the gun from him and waves dismissively. “Just get me the money,” he grumbles. “A hundred dollars.”

Sadie crosses her arms. “Fifty.”

The more he looks at the body _—_ and he can’t seem to stop looking _—_ the more his palms dew with cold sweat. His throat turns dry all of a sudden. He knows what it reminds him of, but he would do anything rather than admit it to himself. Suddenly he understands why, when they were riding earlier, Sadie had avoided saying Arthur’s name.

“No,” he says, “it’s okay. A hundred is fine. Let’s just get out of here.”

“But _—_ ”

“Get the bounty and lets go,” he says, hoping his voice sounds calm. “I’ll be back with a hundred dollars,” he tells the owner. “Expect me in a few days.”

Without waiting for a response, Charles tears his gaze away from the body and walks out of the station into the muggy afternoon air. A few seconds later Sadie joins him, following him in the direction of where they hitched their horses. On her shoulder is the corpse of the criminal, still bleeding sluggishly from where he shot him in the back.

As she stores her gun in the saddle, she throws a glance at Charles. “The hell was that?”

For a second he can’t seem to form a proper response. The only thing he can think of is the way the corpse’s eyes turn dull in the sunlight, the way the man’s dead arms hang like two heavy sacks that can do nothing but swing. He’s sure that if he were to lay a hand on the corpse’s skin, it would already be cold.

His thoughts are interrupted by Sadie putting a hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” she says. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Can we just return the body?”

Sadie’s eyes bore into him, but she lets her hand drop. “Sure. Let’s go back to Valentine.”

* * *

The events of the hours before have left Charles worn in a way that he hasn’t been in days. Even though he and Trelawney safely arrived back at camp in the afternoon, it was the evening now and he still felt both exhausted and on-edge. Arthur trailed into camp a while after them, but had gone to his tent and hadn’t come out since. 

Charles doesn’t blame him _—_ after all, it isn’t every day that you get strangled half to death by a bounty hunter _—_ but a small glimmer of worry still alights in his chest. Everyone else in camp is busy eating Pearson’s stew, congregating around the campfires and immersing themselves in conversation, yet Charles eats his alone. Normally that wouldn’t surprise him. But recently, he and Arthur have taken to eating next to each other. For the past few weeks they’ve shared their meals in companionable silence, and now Charles misses it more than he’s realized.

After a moment taken to make the decision, Charles gets up from where he’s sitting and fills an empty bowl with steaming, fragrant stew. He turns to walk towards Arthur’s tent when he realizes that Arthur’s already come out and is standing a few feet away, looking at him with an odd expression.

“Charles,” he says, frowning. His voice is hoarse, but only a little bit. “Were you lookin’ for me?”

Upon closer inspection, Arthur’s neck bears an angry red ring from where the rope closed around it earlier. There’s no blood, but the skin looks inflamed and a little swollen. He tries not to look too obviously at it and instead says, “I wanted to bring you some dinner.”

Arthur takes the stew from Charles’s hands and smiles. “Missed eatin’ with me that much, huh? Or was this out of the kindness of your heart?”

“You know, it’s like you’ve never had a friend before,” Charles replies, but he says it with humor. “Come on. I’ve finished eating, but I don’t mind sitting down for a spell.”

They walk to an overturned log next to the campfire and sit next to each other. Arthur spoons some stew into his mouth but eventually sets the bowl onto the ground, sighing a little. The spark of worry alights in Charles’s chest once more. 

“You alright?” he asks. “How’s your neck?”

“Well, apart from the fact that it almost got crushed earlier this afternoon, it’s feelin’ just fine.”

“I’m sure.” Charles has to stop himself from rolling his eyes, but he isn’t annoyed _—_ just exasperated, somehow, that a man like Arthur could be so lighthearted about his own near-death experiences. 

“Anyway, how’re you feelin’?” Arthur asks. “You were in that field, same as me. Plus you had to listen to Trelawney the whole way back to camp.”

Charles thinks back on the long return to camp with Trelawney on the back of his horse. “Frankly, I think I would’ve preferred being strangled.”

Arthur laughs, then starts to cough. Charles hands him a cup of water which he drinks in one gulp. “Ah, thanks. Think my throat’s more sore than I thought.”

Charles nods and puts a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “Well, try to rest up. You look like you need it.”

Despite the conversation coming to a natural end, neither of them get up to do something else. By now Charles could’ve chopped a load of wood, or fed the horses, or done one of the million other things there was to do around camp, but he can’t seem to find the motivation to get up and do so. Neither can Arthur, by the look of things. Instead they sit and stare at the fire, and at some point Arthur gently knocks his knee against Charles’s legs.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. “For savin’ me out there, I mean.”

The tone of voice he uses _—_ soft, even a little apologetic _—_ is new and strange. He and Arthur have talked about serious things before, but this seems different somehow. “It’s nothing to thank me for,” Charles says. “You would have done the same for me.”

“Of course I would have. Even if I hadn’t known you, I would’ve.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean _—_ ” Arthur pauses, seeming to struggle with the words “ _—_ you’re a good person, you know? And I think if I had happened to pass by, to have seen you there fightin’ for your life, I would’ve wanted to help.”

Charles tilts his head to look at Arthur. “I’m a good person?” he echoes. No one’s ever said that to him before, at least not in recent memory. Which is fair, because he doesn’t act like one. He’s killed three people today alone. 

“You’re better’n most of us, that’s for sure.” Arthur chuckles while he says it. “Makes me wonder how you got this far, doin’ what we do.”

“I guess I haven’t had much of a choice.”

“So if you had to choose, you wouldn’t be an outlaw?”

Charles looks at Arthur with narrowed eyes. “You say that like you would.”

Arthur smiles a little and shakes his head. “All I wanna do is be out in the open country again. Go...west, or somethin’ like that.”

_ And yet we’re going the opposite direction _ , Charles thinks. Funny how things work out like that. Arthur seems to be thinking the same thing too, judging from the tired expression in his eyes. 

“Maybe we could take a trip out there sometime,” Charles says. He doesn’t really think about the words before they come out of his mouth, and the meaning of them comes to him too late. Almost immediately he feels foolish for saying anything. 

Arthur tilts his head. “Like a huntin’ trip?”

“Sure.” Charles stares at his mud-encrusted boots while he speaks. For some reason, his heart kicks in his chest. “I understand if you don’t have time, though.”

“I have time,” Arthur says quickly. “We can go. I...would like to spend a couple of days with you.” He rubs his neck, also staring off into the distance, and for a few seconds only the fire fills up the silence. 

Charles tries to think of something to say that will quell his nerves. “Do you want to invite John to come with us?”

“Marston?” Arthur looks at him with raised eyebrows. “He’ll just scare all the game away.” He briefly chuckles to himself, then clears his throat. “Why? Do you want him to come along?”

Arthur’s voice is casual, but he holds himself carefully, with stiff shoulders and a straight spine. Charles realizes he’s doing the same thing. “Not particularly,” he says. “I’m fine if it’s just the two of us.”

“Me too.” Arthur gives him a small smile and his posture relaxes a little. “It’s good that, uh. We’re thinkin’ the same thing.”

Charles tries to picture it: him and Arthur, camped together in the forest with only the animals for company. His stomach twists and he swallows. Suddenly the way that their legs are brushing together becomes very obvious, at least to him. It’s possible that he’s just misinterpreting things, seeing an opportunity where there really is none. The last thing he wants to do is act on a false assumption. But he sees Arthur’s face out of the corner of his eye and realizes that he must be thinking the same thing.

“Could I _—_ ” Arthur asks, then cuts himself off with a groan. “Ah, nevermind.”

“Say it.” 

“No, I don’t, uh. I dunno if I should.”

Something bold awakens in Charles and he lays his palm on Arthur’s knee. There’s no one around to see them _—_ it’s late, and most people are in their tents. There might not be an opportunity like this again.

“Then I will,” Charles says, and takes a breath. “Can I kiss you?”

Arthur answers _—_ not by speaking, but by doing exactly that.

The stubble on Arthur’s face brushes Charles’s cheek and he smiles against the kiss. Arthur smells like pine needles and smoke, probably from the fire, but Charles pushes that thought out of his mind, and focuses instead on how he feels against his lips: soft, and gentle, and firm all at once. At some point Arthur’s hand snakes up Charles’s torso and comes to rest on his cheek _—_ the cheek with the scar. His palm is calloused and warm, the thumb stroking against Charles’s jawline. 

They break apart, both of them catching their breath. Charles hesitates to meet Arthur’s eyes but when he does he can’t help but grin. He’s wanted this for a long time, even though he never realized it, and it looks like Arthur has too, judging from the dazed and giddy expression on his face.

“You _—_ ” Arthur says, “ _—_ Charles, you…”

“What?” Charles can’t help but laugh a little.

“I just didn’t think you would wanna do that,” Arthur says breathlessly. 

Charles takes Arthur’s hand in his own and squeezes it. Arthur is wrong. The only thing Charles doesn’t want to do is stop. 

So he tells him that under the soft pale moonlight, and Arthur reddens and smiles, and Charles kisses him _—_ again, and again, and again.

* * *

The rest of the ride passes in a blur. Charles isn’t sure if he imagines it or not, but the bounty’s dead body already starts to give off a smell in the heat. It makes the task of breathing even harder and for a moment he considers pulling up his bandana to cover his nose, but he doesn’t, because if Sadie can handle the smell then so can he.

Soon they arrive in front of the sheriff’s office. When Sadie unloads the body from the back of her horse, Charles hangs back, and when she starts haggling with the sheriff for payment, he doesn’t say a word. They walk away with eighty dollars _—_ half of the original reward. 

“Not bad,” Sadie comments as they walk out of the office. “I was sure we weren’t gonna get above fifty.”

“Well, you really grilled him in there.”

She laughs and pats Hera on the neck, feeding her a treat. “I have a reputation to keep, don’t I?” She hands Charles a peppermint, which he too feeds Falmouth. “Say, were you good back there? You looked like you’d seen a ghost or somethin’.”

It’s the third time she’s asked him that in the past day, and Charles can barely restrain his irritation. He schools his expression and says, “It’s been a long day. I’m tired.”

“Sure,” she says. Her eyes soften. “Let’s rest, then. Get somethin’ to drink at the saloon.”

Her pity for him is obvious, which only makes him more annoyed, but he figures that having something to quench his thirst would at least refresh him. There’s nothing else to do in this town anyway. “You’re right,” he says. 

They start walking across the street to the saloon and as Sadie pushes open the doors, Charles speaks up again. “Listen, I know I’ve been _—_ ”

Sadie shakes her head and cuts him off before he can continue. “Charles, it ain’t nothin’ to worry about. Let’s get a drink, yeah?”

This is the Sadie he knows: unfazed and understanding. He musters up a smile and says, “Yeah.”

They lean on the wooden surface of the bar, sticky with spilled beer and other liquids Charles prefers not to think too hard about. Sadie clinks two coins down on the counter and nods her head at the barkeep. “Two of whatever’s cheapest.”

Charles raises an eyebrow at her. “Looking to get drunk?”

“Just buzzed,” she says lightly. “It’s nice to have someone to do this with, you know. Meet too many fools lookin’ for a fight when I’m alone.”

The bartender places two greasy mugs in front of them, filled with pale golden beer. “Keep the change,” Sadie says to him, and he swipes the two coins away and into his pocket.

The beer is flat and almost flavorless, but it’s ice-cold. It’s exactly the same as in 1899. Around them the conversation of the other patrons swells with laughter, drunken ramblings, and the clinking of glasses against each other in cheers.

“I remember when I came here with Arthur,” he says.

Sadie looks at him and takes a long drink, closing and then opening her eyes again. She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. “Just the two of you?”

“Just the two of us.” He looks at his bare wrist and feels the absence of his bracelet keenly. “It was the first time we really talked, I guess. We were there for hours.”

Sadie hums and traces a finger around the rim of her glass. “Must’ve been nice.” 

“It was.”

A second passes before Sadie says, “I still miss him, y’know.”

The dead body of the bounty flashes before his eyes and Charles squeezes them shut. He opens them again and glances out the saloon window at the people picking their way through the muddy streets. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says quietly.

Immediately Sadie groans and rubs her brow with her fingertips. “No, don’t be sorry. Hell, I’m the one who should be sorry. I understand if you, uh, don’t wanna talk about it.”

Charles stares down at the film of dried liquor on the bar. As much as he dislikes the sounds of these prefabricated statements, it’s hard to come up with anything else to tell her. She means well, but for the most part Charles has spent the past eight years doing everything but talking about Arthur, and he doesn’t plan to start now. 

“It’s been eight years,” he murmurs. “What is there to say?”  
“That it shouldn’t have happened.” Sadie grips her mug until her knuckles turn white. “That two of the best men I ever met died within months of each other, but Micah walked free for eight years. Ain’t it unfair to you?”

He gives her a long look. “Of course it’s unfair. Many things are.”

She meets his eyes and then looks back into the amber depths of her drink. It’s a long time before she says anything, so he passes his eyes around the room once again, taking in the other patrons. Somehow he and Sadie look like the happiest ones there, or at least the most well-off, which most of the time means the same thing. 

Sadie takes another gulp of her beer and sighs. “There’s somethin’ I don’t get about you, Charles,” she says. “All this time _—_ ridin’ with me and John, I mean _—_ you hardly ever said a thing about Arthur. And I know it’s been a while since he died, but to me that don’t matter so much.” Turning her head towards him, she looks more somber than anything else. “But maybe I don’t know.”

_ You don’t _ , he thinks bitterly, but then pushes the thought aside. Why is his first response anger? Sadie doesn’t deserve that. No one does. If he were a better man he would buy her another drink and spend the evening telling her stories about Arthur, stories that no one knows but him. He can see that she wants it. But no matter how hard he tries, he can’t make his mouth form the words that he needs to speak. 

She seems not to expect an answer from him, because after a few seconds pass she asks, “Where do you wanna go tomorrow?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” she says, “to get bounties.”

_ Ah, bounties,  _ he thinks. He’s been so deep in his drink that he’s almost forgotten why he’s even here. Eighty dollars for a day of work _—_ it’s unbeatable pay, if nothing else. And it would’ve been close to two hundred if he hadn’t messed it up by killing the man. 

Once again Charles thinks of the dead body, sluggishly bleeding over the rump of Sadie’s horse. He’s certainly killed in more gruesome ways than a shot to the back, but for the past couple hours he hasn’t been able to get the image out of his mind. Eighty dollars can pay for two month’s worth of food and lodging. If he splits the money with Sadie, it would pay for one month for him to settle down somewhere, to find a real job. The more that Charles thinks about it, that’s all these bounty rewards are: borrowed money to pay for borrowed time. And it turns him, too, into someone borrowed, someone who he’s afraid he won’t recognize if he keeps this up.

Maybe Sadie sees things differently. But Charles can’t live like this, not any longer. “I’m not sure if I can do this anymore,” he tells her.

She turns to look at him. “This kinda work?”

He nods, and she lowers her eyes back to her drink. A small, rueful smile appears on her face. “I thought you might say that,” she says. “It’s funny, ain’t it? I used to think that after runnin’ with Dutch, this sort of life would be like a walk in the park.” There’s a pause where she raises her head again to glance into his eyes. “But it never works out that way.”

Charles is reminded that she’s been doing this for years: passing through towns, picking up whatever bounty poster she could find, killing for money. “No,” he echoes, “it doesn’t.” He takes another sip of his drink. “I think I’ll go back to the station owner tomorrow. I have money to pay him back.”

“I can come with you,” Sadie says.

Charles shakes his head. “It’s alright. This is my problem to solve. You should go find another bounty.”

Sadie laughs and says, “I am pretty good at that, ain’t I?” When the laugh dies down into a sigh she rummages in her pocket and pulls out a crumpled wad of bills, placing it on the counter between them. “Take it,” she says softly. “It’s the bounty money. Eighty dollars. I know it ain’t enough, but take it anyway. I don’t need it.”

“Sadie _—_ ”

“Please, Charles.” She pushes the money towards him. “This ain’t pity, or _—_ or whatever else it may seem like. I know you can look after yourself. But you don’t have to do it alone.”

He lets his eyes wander down to the money. His savings are running low, and he only has a little more than a hundred to his name. This money would mean that he could keep the little that he has instead of handing it off to the station owner. It’s frustrating how much money means _—_ how much it’s dictated his life and the lives of everyone he held dear. But it seems like Sadie knows that more than anyone.

“What about you?” he asks her.

She grins and drains the last of her drink. “There’s always more work for someone like me. More criminals, more of the bastards who wanna catch them. I’ll be fine.” She says it so nonchalantly, but in the next moment her eyes glance around once more at the room around them. Finally she turns to him, looking almost apologetic. 

“I need to go, Charles,” she says. “I don’t like draggin’ out goodbyes.”

Before he can respond she leaves her empty glass on the bar and starts walking out of the saloon. But Charles is quick, and once he realizes where she is going he grabs her shoulder, more out of instinct than anything else. 

“Wait,” he says. Then she looks at him, both surprised and expectant, while he fumbles for what next to tell her. Finally he settles on, “You’re a good friend to me.”

“Oh, Charles…”

“You were a good friend to Arthur.” A flash of pain crosses over her expression, yet Charles pushes on: “I think you made things easier for him in...in the end.”

“I _—_ ” Sadie’s breath hitches as she speaks “ _—_ God, I hope so.”

He doesn’t know if it was the right thing to say, but he’s already said it and there’s no taking it back. And it was all true, in any case. Maybe no one’s ever told her it before. 

“Write to John, okay? I’ll write to him too.”

Sadie nods. “Of course I will,” she says. “Somehow I doubt either of the two of us are gonna obtain our own permanent mailing addresses.” 

“Unless you decide to settle down in _—_ where was it you mentioned? Mexico?”

“South America,” she chuckles. Silence falls on them for a moment and Charles realizes Sadie looks tired. Older than he remembers her. She sighs and shifts her weight awkwardly. “We...we’re all we got, you know that?”

“I know.” Charles lets go of her shoulder and looks at her softly. “Take care, Sadie.”

She gives him a crooked smile. “Be happy,” she tells him in her raspy voice. “You deserve it. More’n any of us.”

As he watches her walk out of the saloon and into the evening air, he wonders if he made the right decision. Sadie would let him do bounties with her for as long as they could get them _—_ he knows that. John, too, would’ve let him stay at Beecher’s Hope with nothing asked in return. There’s no reason why he has to go off alone, to struggle so much just to make a living by himself. Deep down he knows it was always going to turn out this way.

The din of the saloon gets louder and louder until it is unbearable, so Charles goes to the barkeep and pays for a room. As he does so, he sees the wad of money still on the counter, so he picks it up and thumbs through it. 

He realizes with a pang in his stomach that Sadie had given him a hundred dollars.

_ Be happy _ , she’d said. Sadie and John _—_ did both of them know, this whole time, that the last thing he wants is pity? He thought they didn’t. But maybe they just had a strange way of showing it.

Charles pockets the money, trying to forget the brief happiness of his life since he met his friends again, and climbs the stairs to his room. 

After he puts his belongings down and takes a bath and finally stretches on the lumpy mattress to get some sleep, Charles thinks about what Sadie said to him. It’s true that he hasn’t talked about Arthur much, if at all. It’s not like he doesn’t miss him, because he does. Sometimes he can’t sleep because of it. He just can’t talk about it like she can, or John can, or everyone else can, even when it seems like grief consumes them all. There are some things that are hard to put into words _—_ not because they are too complicated, but because they are too simple. 

Charles shivers against the draft the blows through the crack in the window. On the slow silent nights where he and Arthur would have nothing to do but lay next to each other and look at the stars, conversation would often turn to one question: if they could settle down somewhere together, where would it be? The first few times the question arose, Arthur insisted on Ambarino, but Charles rejected it for being too cold and instead argued for the Heartlands. But after the discussion turned well-worn, losing its heat, Arthur had murmured where he truly wanted them to live. “A compromise,” he’d explained, “in case this whole thing blows over. In case we can do more than just talk about it.” Charles had listened to him and agreed _—_ it was a good compromise. This place, wherever it was, was perfect. It suited their needs like nowhere else. There were days when Charles traced an invisible path to this place on his map, over and over, until the paper was worn and soft underneath his fingertips and he thought he would remember the way for as long as he lived.

_ Well _ , Charles thinks,  _ I wish I had written it down _ .

Once he thinks that, the thoughts keep flooding into his mind until he can barely process them fast enough:  _ Arthur, I wish we had left camp more. I wish I had told you more about my mother. I wish I had asked you to buy expensive oils from Saint Denis and paint a self-portrait so I could still look at your face, because I think if we had walked into a photographer’s shop and asked for a picture together they would have thrown us out.  _

_ I wish I had loved you for longer. I wish I had buried you sooner. I wish I could forget the hollowness of your dead eyes and remember the color of them when you were alive. _

Alone in his room, Charles falls asleep that night, buoyed by shifting images of cabins buried in plush snow, little huts beside a river, hotel rooms with big glassy windows looking upon the street. But when his mind's eye looks inside each one, the only thing he sees is Arthur, and everything else _—_ the walls, the noise, the furniture _—_ they all melt away.

When he walks into Wallace Station the next morning, the first thing he notices is that the pool of blood is gone. The owner comes around from behind the counter and gives Charles a long look.

“I see you’re bright and early. Do you have what you owe me?”

Charles reaches into his pocket and pulls out the money Sadie had given him. “I do,” he says. “I’m Charles Smith, by the way.”

Taking the money, the owner raises his eyebrows. “Much obliged, I guess. Name’s Tom Waters.” He reaches behind the counter and hands Charles back his gun, the one that he was given to ensure Charles’s return. The familiar heft of it is comforting and he holsters it, although he hopes he doesn’t have to use it.

He’s right back where he started, he realizes. No work and precious little money. Charles spends a moment gathering his courage then says, “Do you happen to have any jobs?”

Tom looks at Charles like he’s speaking a foreign language. “Jobs?”

“I’m looking for work,” he says. “Any kind of work. I, uh, I’m no longer in the business of bounty hunting.”

Tom scoffs at him. “I hope not, for your sake and mine.” He gives Charles a once-over, his eyes lingering on Charles’s scuffed, muddy riding boots. “You don’t happen to know how to type, do you?”

“On a typewriter?”

“...I’ll take your answer as a no, then.”

The snarky tone of his voice makes Charles want to clench his fists in frustration, but he controls his expression. A blow to his pride heals faster than a blow to his meager savings. “Is there anything else I can help with, Mr. Waters? I _—_ I know how to hunt. I can ride for days.”

Tom heaves a sigh and is silent for a second. “Ride, huh?”

“I’ve been riding all my life.”

With narrowed eyes, Tom looks at him for a few seconds, like he’s deciding what to say. Eventually he crosses his arms. “I guess I could send you on deliveries. I tend to have a surplus of supplies, so the folks over at Bacchus Station pay me for whatever I don’t use.”

Charles holds back a sigh of relief. “I’d be happy to help for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Don’t expect much pay, alright? It ain’t like I’m asking you to do anything special, and I can’t spare more’n a few dollars a day anyhow.”

“Of course,” Charles quickly says, although his heart sinks as he realizes how long he might have to work here before he saves up enough to go east. “I understand.”

Tom doesn’t seem to acknowledge or care what he has to say, and instead gestures to the stairwell tucked against the wall. “In the basement is a bit of guest lodging. We really use it for emergencies, but I guess you can take it if you want. I’ll need you ready to go by sunrise anyway.”

Charles nods. “I appreciate it, Mr. Waters.” He gives a quick glance over to the post office on the other side of the room. “...Could I send a letter, by any chance?”

“I don’t see why not.”

So he takes a piece of paper and a pen from the supplies provided and bends over the counter to scribble a note in careful handwriting:

_ Will be in Wallace Station for some time if you want to write. I am fine, Sadie is too, but we decided to part ways. Hope you are well. Send Abigail and Jack my regards. C.S. _

Tom takes the letter and hides it in some cubby, saying that he’ll send it the next day. There’s nothing more Charles can do to ensure its arrival, so he spends the afternoon sitting on the bench outside the station, watching passerby trot along the road. When dusk falls he eats a quiet dinner alone, because Tom is too standoffish to be much company, and he takes the time to enjoy each mouthful. After dinner he takes out a wood carving and shaves off little pieces with his hunting knife. He lets the wood shavings fall like feather-light leaves onto the grass.

Compared to the haze of riding and shooting that the last week had been, the day is slow and sweet. It doesn’t matter that Charles keeps touching his wrist only to remember that his bracelet isn’t there anymore, or that he can see the pallid skin of the bounty’s dead body whenever he shuts his eyes. Sometime in the middle of the night he wakes up from a dreamless sleep and thinks,  _ I never want to kill anyone again _ . 

If nothing else, it’s true. It sounds like a promise.

* * *

Once Arthur finishes coughing, he looks at Charles and sighs. “I swear, this damn swamp’s killin’ my lungs.”

Charles leans against the crumbling wall of Shady Belle and crosses his arms. The swamp air is thick and foul, but nothing out of the ordinary, at least for the south. “It seems fine to me,” he says.

“Well, maybe you have...I dunno. A strong constitution, or whatever you wanna call it.”

“Says the man who got tortured by O’Driscolls for three days and survived.”

Arthur grins and says, “I feel like that proves my bad luck rather than anythin’ else.”

“Or Dutch’s ignorance.”

Arthur presses his lips together and looks away. Maybe it’s too pessimistic for Charles to say things like this, but he’s started to sense the same sort of discontentment in Arthur that he’s been feeling for weeks, ever since the Blackwater job. Arthur used to be concerned with loyalty and loyalty alone, but recently things have been different. He doesn’t know what caused it _—_ if there even was any specific thing, rather than just the accumulation of all of Dutch’s wrongdoings.

Charles decides to change the subject. “I’m glad you finally told John about us,” he says. “He deserves to know.”

“I guess so,” Arthur admits. He seems relieved to have something to talk about other than Dutch. “Come to think of it, I don’t know what took him so long. He used to practically chomp at the bit to hear news about Mary when we were younger.”

Looking at Arthur pointedly, Charles smiles a little. “There are a few differences between me and Mary, Arthur.”

Arthur grins back. “Oh, of course. For one, you have a much more practical fashion sense.” He laughs silently at his own joke, then he grows quiet.

Charles knows that type of silence well enough, so he brushes the back of his hand against Arthur’s and looks at him. “What’s on your mind?”

Arthur meets his eyes and huffs a laugh. “Ah, nothin’ much,” he says. Then he glances around. “I guess I just didn’t realize how nice it is to have someone else know about...well. What we have.”

This has been the subject of their conversations _—_ as well as their disagreements _—_ for some time now. It’s gotten harder and harder to hide what they do together and how they look at each other around camp, and although Charles is able to restrain himself well enough, the fact remains that he doesn’t want to. About two weeks ago he brought up the possibility of telling someone else who they trust in the gang. He suggested John, because although he’d learned about the rift between him and Arthur, that rift had seemed to vanish overnight when Jack had been taken. But even so, Arthur hadn’t wanted to say anything about them to anyone. Whether it was shame, anxiety, or fear, Charles didn’t know, but nothing he said had managed to convince Arthur to admit to John what’s been going on between them.

That is, until John had caught them together about half an hour ago.

Charles suppresses the urge to say  _ I told you so _ and instead smiles and takes Arthur’s hand. “We have time,” he says. “There’s no rush to tell people.”

“Oh,  _ now  _ you take my side?” Arthur asks, but there’s no bite in the words. 

Charles grins back. “Only when it benefits me.”

Arthur rolls his eyes fondly. He glances at Charles’s hand, and his eyes land on a bracelet tied around his wrist. “Hey, is that new?”

Charles’s eyes follow Arthur’s gaze. The bracelet on his wrist is made up of deep cobalt beads, with lighter ones interspersed to make a pattern. There are strands of leather woven in as well, contrasting the blue with earthy brown tones. It had taken Charles hours to make. 

“It is,” he says. He reaches into his pocket and feels around for what he’s been keeping hidden for the past few days, intending to wait until he and Arthur had a moment alone. “You know, I, uh, actually have something for you.”

Arthur’s face lights up. “Aw, Charles, you didn’t have to do that. What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion, just...thought it would be nice, that’s all.” Secretly Charles’s heart squeezes at Arthur’s reaction _—_ so unguarded, so genuine. It makes him wish they had more moments alone together.

He takes the gift out of his bag and holds it in front of Arthur: an exact copy of the bracelet on his wrist, made out of the same material. Arthur gently takes it into his hands and his eyes widen.

“Charles,” he says softly. “Are they...matchin’?”

“Yes.”

“On purpose?”

The question makes Charles smile. “No, I spent hours making them match by accident,” he says. Then he intertwines their fingers, pressing their palms together. “Yes, Arthur. It was on purpose.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Arthur laughs and squeezes Charles’s hand. “Thank you,” he says. “I, uh, dunno what to say. It’s beautiful.”

“Let me put it on you.” 

Charles takes the bracelet and ties it around Arthur’s wrist, securing the soft leather so that it doesn’t fall off. Arthur raises his wrist to his face and admires it, a smile spreading across his face. 

Then, after making sure no one is watching, he pulls Charles into a kiss _—_ slow, soft, and sweet. Warmth beats in Charles’s chest and flushes his cheeks. He doesn’t know why he still feels so giddy even after so long, but he relishes the feeling. He surrounds himself with it. For a second the muddy swamp disappears, and he can forget everything else.

“Charles.”

“Hm?”

Arthur cups his cheek. “I ain’t never going to take it off.”

It’s strange. As soon as Arthur opened his mouth, Charles knew what he was going to say. And he wants to say something back, something that would express how easy it was to decide to make this for him. He wants to say how Arthur deserves even more. But he doesn’t, because the warmth in his chest and the man so close in front of him distract him so much that he figures,  _ I have all the time in the world. _

* * *

It takes some time for Charles to get used to this strange new life. The first day on the job, he wakes up in the damp basement and emerges into the silvery darkness of early morning, and Tom wordlessly hands a bundle of supplies to him. Charles, mouth gummy with sleep, is equally silent as he loads the supplies onto the back of Falmouth. 

The near-daily rides to the station are long and difficult. The deliveries to Bacchus Station are received by a person named Hal, who soon becomes the only friendly face Charles sees in his trips there. Soon he understands why he has to make the deliveries so early _—_ if he leaves any later than sunrise, he risks making his return after dark.

The tense atmosphere between him and Tom never really fades, and as much as Charles loathes having the other man as his employer, he stays civil. Soon he grows to appreciate the small victories, like the load being especially light one day, or his horse having more energy than normal. One of the only consolations is that Bacchus Station is east of where he’s staying. Charles hadn’t forgotten how he wanted to go east _—_ in fact, over the past few days the desire has only grown stronger. Every time he starts out on his supply trips, he feels a pull to keep riding long past his destination, over the mountains, even all the way to Annesburg. Of course, by the end of the ride he wants nothing more than to get off Falmouth and rest, but some part of him still looks down the winding road and wonders what would happen if he kept going. 

He blames that part of himself on how he’s lived his life so far: wandering, never quite settling down, even when it seemed that way on the surface.  _ It’s all I know _ , he reasons, but that’s not quite a consolation either. What if he and Arthur really had settled down somewhere, in that place he can no longer remember the name of? Would he have stayed?

It all seems so long ago now, like a dream too vivid to fade away. But often he can’t think of anything else.

A week passes, then another, with no response from John and his family. Once he asks Tom about it, but he’s met with a shrug and “give it another week”. The deliveries go on and they don’t get easier. Every day Charles wakes up to darkness, then spends long hours under the sun, and soon he begins to wonder what’s keeping him here.

There are two things that keep Charles from running off in the night: the letter he’s waiting on from John, and the fact that every morning he heads east. Even if he always turns back.

One morning, Tom hands him a small envelope and says, “Looks like you’ve got a response.” Charles’s stomach leaps with anticipation and he takes the letter with shaking hands, stuffing it into his pocket to open in privacy. He doesn’t know what took John so long, but he’s missed him and Sadie more than he’s realized, and this small form of contact has been the only thing he’s looked forward to for the past weeks.

After a moment Tom clears his throat and nods towards the pack of supplies on the counter: cans of food, bundles of dried herbs, and a bag of coal. “Are you going to do the delivery today, Mr. Smith?”

A spark of annoyance flares in Charles’s chest, not for the first time. But, unlike all the other times Tom has spoken to him this way, he suddenly feels bold. 

“I will,” Charles says. “But can I ask you something?”

“Quickly.”

“Are there any other places that need this sort of work? Places farther east of here?”

Tom furrows his brow. “Why east? Climate suit you better?”

“No. I just want to go there.”

“Well, beggars can’t be choosers. I’m sure other places might have work, but I don’t see any reason to give up a perfectly good salary right here.”

“Of course not,” Charles says, smiling to himself. “I wouldn’t think of it. Let me take the supplies, and I’ll be on my way.”

He packs the supplies on his horse and nudges it into a trot, raising a hand in farewell. 

A number of hours later, Charles pulls up to Bacchus Station, hitches Falmouth to a post, and unloads the supplies. The movements are mindless at this point; he’s been doing them for so long that he doesn’t need to think. His back aches from the ride, and that is familiar as well. The only thing that isn’t familiar is the seed of anticipation in his chest. He still hasn’t read the letter, and he doesn’t really know why _—_ a part of him wants to save it for the right time, like a reward.  _ Is this the kind of gratification I’ve resorted to? _ he asks himself, somewhat amused. Maybe it is. 

Charles wants to go east, wants it like nothing else. He can’t say why, but it doesn’t matter. For too long he’s been nothing more than a drifter, letting others decide his path for him, but now he has a chance to change that. He hasn’t saved up much money, but it’s better than what he had before, and maybe it won’t be so hard to find a way to make a living once he gets to where he wants to go. 

After dropping the supplies off Charles pats Falmouth and climbs into the saddle. He’s meant to turn around and head back up the path. But instead he whispers a word of encouragement to his horse, makes sure John’s letter is tucked inside his bag, and keeps going.

As Charles guides Falmouth through the narrow mountain path, he thinks,  _ I should have known.  _ It’s barely been a month since he’s left, but despite that he’s returned again. He hadn’t meant to come back. All he did was choose which path to go, and somehow the series of turns took him a little ways up from Bacchus Station, up the mountain path, and now here.  _ It’s so close _ , he thinks, _ so why not make the detour, one last time _ ?

Today’s weather is hot and dry and the flowers around the gravestone flutter against the harsh breeze. Charles gets off his horse and walks up to the marker. The last time he came here was to return his and Arthur’s bracelets, and he remembers that after a moment of thought he’d decided to weigh them down with a stone at the foot of the grave. Crouching down, he searches for where he left them.

But no matter how hard he looks, he can’t find anything. 

His heartbeat picks up and he starts to overturn rocks. Maybe the wind had blown them away? He searches around the foot of the grave, behind it, even in between the clusters of wildflowers. There’s nothing. He thinks he sees a hint of blue under a rock and he hurries to turn it over, but it’s just a feather. He lets it flutter in the wind and looks harder. There must be something he’s missing. Briefly he feels like a fool for crouching among the plants like this, picking through the dirt as finely as he can manage, but he keeps going. 

Minutes pass, then an hour. Time slips away from him before he even notices. Falmouth tosses his head and Charles knows the horse wants to leave, but he just hands him a sugar cube out of his satchel and keeps looking. There’s nothing else to do except look. But no matter how hard he looks, there’s no telltale strip of glossy blue, no soft pieces of leather peeking out from between the blades of grass. 

It takes a moment before Charles realizes that he’s breathing heavily, that his palms have a thin sheen of sweat over them. A knot forms in his stomach that won’t budge. How could he have been this foolish? Of course the bracelets would have been stolen, either by a person or by an animal. Pinning them down under a rock wasn’t enough. The only thing that would have been enough would be burying them, but the thought of digging up dirt around the grave had sickened him.

He remembers how John and Sadie had looked at him funny when he’d said that, but they’d let him do what he’d wanted. He should have listened to them instead of himself.

Or maybe he never should have given the bracelets up. He should have carried both of them with him, so that nothing bad could ever happen to them again. It’s funny _—_ it seems so obvious in retrospect, but the bracelets themselves don’t matter to him. He could have replaced them with two scraps of paper, or two flowers, or two of anything as long as they reminded him of Arthur. Because isn’t Arthur what’s truly important? All Charles wants is to have something that he could reach out and touch, no matter what happens. But even that is no longer a possibility.

A thousand gleaming scenarios reveal themselves to him and in each one Charles has more than what he has now: the bracelets, or a picture of Arthur’s face, or even Arthur himself _—_ because he would be lying to himself if he said that Arthur’s death was unavoidable. Maybe Charles hadn’t cared enough, or tried enough, or sacrificed enough. He can’t shake the feeling that if things had just been a little bit different, Arthur would still be alive.

And they would have been happy, wouldn’t they? In that place that Charles can’t remember, free from a disease that can’t be cured and a gang that wasn’t able to be saved. 

Despite it all, happiness would have come to them. Quietly, and slowly, but it would have come.

* * *

Together Charles and Arthur sit around the campfire and poke the embers with sticks. They’re miles away from Beaver Hollow, nestled in some hard-to-reach glen where no one can find them. The ground is damp under their feet and the trees create a dense canopy of leaves over their head. Thin streaks of moonlight find their way through the branches. Nothing except the crackling of the fire and the quiet rustling of the wind makes a sound.

He and Arthur have been riding out to places like these almost every night. They’ve finally been getting the alone time Charles has hoped for, yet he can’t find it in himself to appreciate it for what it is _—_ maybe because it didn’t come soon enough. He’ll never say no to an opportunity to be with Arthur, but now every time he’s asked to “come out on a ride” something sours in his chest. The fact is that the opportunities for truly escaping from this place have passed. What is the point, besides making up for lost time?

“You should get out of here,” Arthur says, interrupting Charles’s thoughts.

Charles looks up into Arthur’s face. “Right now?”

“No, no.” Arthur coughs and wipes his mouth with his glove, not even looking at it. “I mean, in general. You should get out of the gang.”

It’s the first time Arthur has said anything of the sort to him. He always thought that no matter how disgusted Arthur got with Dutch, no matter how fiercely he fought for everyone else in the gang to leave, Charles would be the exception. 

“Why are you telling me this now?” he asks. “You had so many chances. What’s changed?”

“You know what’s changed,” Arthur says. He throws another log onto the fire and lets it burn for a few seconds. The flames sink everything around them into an amber light, so strong that it makes even the deep blue bracelets on his and Arthur’s wrists turn golden. “There ain’t nothin’ keepin you here, Charles.”

_ You are _ , he thinks, but knows well enough why Arthur doesn’t mention this. 

“Where would I even go?”

Arthur shrugs. “Anywhere,” he says. “Back to Valentine, or Rhodes. Hell, even Saint Denis. I just don’t want you to die for...for nothin’.”

Indignation curdles in his stomach. “You don’t need to protect me.”

Arthur lays his hand on top of Charles’s and leaves it there. From this close Charles can hear the wheezing breaths in Arthur’s chest. What does it actually feel like to be this sick? He’s never asked. He never will. Still, part of him wants there to be some magical way of transferring pain from one person to another, so that he could take it all away from Arthur and bear it himself.

After a minute, Arthur speaks up again. “I ain’t protectin’ you,” he says. “I just want you to be happy.”

“Then I wish you would stop worrying about me so much,” Charles replies. “In fact, I wish _—_ ” he takes a breath, feeling it catch in his throat “ _—_ I wish that you would tell me something.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me where you want me to bury you.”

A second passes where neither of them say anything. Then Arthur sighs and passes a hand across his face. “I thought I told you to get out of here.”

“So you expect me to abandon you? Just like that?”

“Stop talkin’ crazy, Charles,” Arthur says. “Ain’t this what we all signed up for? I mean, there’s a chance I won’t even be salvageable. I might be shot up, or _—_ ”

“Just answer my question.”

There’s another long pause, but it’s alright. Charles is patient. He buried Jenny, and Davey, and Hosea, so he sees no reason why Arthur wouldn’t just be another name on the list from him to check off. Whatever the reason, the thought of leaving him to rot somewhere turns his stomach. He can’t picture it: the sight of Arthur’s body, decaying and soft, and as he looks at Arthur right now he tries his best not to.

Eventually Arthur stands up, goes to his horse, and takes out two bedrolls. One for each of them. 

“Let’s talk about this in the morning,” he says. His voice is so worn that the iron edge of Charles’s anger softens.

Wordlessly Charles takes his bedroll and sets it up a few feet away from Arthur’s, because they don’t sleep together anymore. It’s too risky. Minutes pass where the only noise is the shifting of clothes against wool as the two of them settle in for the night.

The next time Charles wakes up it’s because of Arthur. Wet, painful coughs echo in the darkness, jolting any vestige of sleep from him, and soon he is wide awake, heart hammering. This has happened dozens of times before, yet fear still fills him as he lies there helplessly.  _ What if this is it? _ he thinks.  _ What if this is the fit that kills him? _

All he can do is reach blindly out in the direction of Arthur’s bedroll. Immediately he feels a hand and grabs it like a lifeline. Soon the coughs peter out into faint wheezes and the grip on his hand grows weaker and weaker.

A spike of terror pierces his stomach. “Arthur,” he says, trying to control his voice. “Arthur.”

“I’m here.” Arthur’s voice is weak and small, and he clears his throat a few times after speaking. 

Charles lets out a relieved breath. The terror fizzles out into nothingness and he lets the tension go out of his shoulders. Immediately he feels foolish for even thinking anything would happen, despite what had happened. “Are you alright?”

“I, uh, didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.” 

How can Arthur even think of things like this right now? How can he worry about anyone besides himself? “Don’t apologize. You know I don’t care if you wake me.”

“I know,” Arthur says. A second passes and then he says, “Charles?”

“What?”

“Bury me out west.”

There’s a moment when Charles doesn’t know what he means, then the events of the hours before come flooding back into his mind. The ride to the glen, the fire, the quiet argument _—_ he remembers it all.

“Do you have a _—_ a place?” he asks. “Anywhere specific?”

“Not really,” Arthur says, and Charles is sure that if it wasn’t so dark he would see Arthur throwing his hands up in a helpless gesture. “Just...west.”

The blackened logs in the fire glow in the night. “How far west? Where should I go?” Charles asks. Dimly he realizes that he sounds afraid, possibly more afraid than ever before. All of a sudden he feels as if he doesn’t know this country at all. 

“Why do you sound like that? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says. “I just _—_ I don’t know where to go.”

It’s stupid. He sounds stupid, even as the words leave his mouth. And his voice won’t stop shaking, even as he tries his best to steady it. All he wants is a location, a landmark,  _ something.  _ He would carry Arthur’s body to California if he wanted him to. Charles has never been there, but he would get a map and a compass and a strong, fast horse. 

Arthur rubs his thumb across Charles’s hand. “You know that when I first went to Oregon with Dutch and Hosea, I went three days without even realizin’ we were in the state? But then I saw a species of flower that my momma used to like that only grew out there, and that’s when I knew. No landmark, no fanfare...but I knew.” 

A breeze passes through the forest, rustling the branches of the trees above them, and Charles speaks up. “What are you saying?” he asks, still with his shaking voice.

“I’m sayin’ that I love you,” Arthur murmurs. “And that you’ll be okay.”

Even in the darkness Charles can tell that Arthur is quiet and sure, and he sounds so convinced that Charles starts to feel the same way himself. He doesn’t know how west can be anything but a direction. Still, it must be something: an idea, a feeling, a sense, something that can lie dormant for years until it is discovered. Whatever it is, he will find it. Or let it find him.

Maybe Arthur doesn’t think Charles will go through with it. But Arthur is wrong _—_ of course he will. The future lays itself out in front of him like a well-worn path. He will leave, and Arthur will die, and then he will carry Arthur’s body until the open country takes them into its gentle arms.  _ This is the last kind thing I will ever do for you _ , he realizes.

This is the last kind thing.

* * *

Charles brushes his fingertips against the carved words in the headstone. All of these feelings come rushing back over him like a warm wave. He hadn’t meant to remember, but somehow it turned out that way anyway. Just like, when he heard the news Arthur had died, he’d meant to go get him within a day, but on that day he couldn’t gather the courage to go. Neither could he on the day after that, nor the day after that, and eventually without him realizing it a whole month passed and he had done nothing. When he’d finally gone, following where the newspapers said Arthur was killed, he’d found the body _—_ but nothing could change the fact that Arthur was just that. A month-old body.

In the end, Charles had made it out west, just like Arthur had said he would. It was the moment that he couldn't find the strength to go on anymore. West was when the stench of death was so strong that despite his best efforts, Charles leaned over in the saddle and vomited. West was the sudden flash of anger that took Charles by surprise and shook him to his core _—_ anger that Arthur would make anyone go through this, anger that he loved Arthur too much to refuse. It took three days and five hours of sleep and an eternity of holding Arthur's corpse to his chest, both repulsed beyond belief and terrified to let go, for Charles to make it out west and know. 

Slowly he sits down next to the grave. A deep exhaustion echoes inside of him. He’s tired of the remembering, the regretting, the mourning _—_ all of it.  _ I wish I’d never met you _ , he thinks, then immediately takes it back. Of course he doesn’t wish that. What he wishes is exactly the opposite: that he’d gotten the chance to love Arthur all over again. He would do it better.

The wildflowers dance in the dusk’s golden light and Falmouth stamps impatiently. They should get going before nightfall. From where he is right now Charles can see another kind of future, one that he would have never dreamed of but seems to be inevitable. In this future he rides east, towards Annesburg, uncertain of what will happen once he arrives but knowing that he will find a way to make it there. He will go to the post office, open John’s letter, and then write a response. 

In this future he knows that his life has been split into a before and an after _—_ two halves that can never be joined into one. Whatever he writes will be steeped in an inexplicable sadness, as everything else will be as well. But he needs to get it out somehow. There is so much that he’s kept inside him without realizing, so much that his chest burns and his throat grows tight and painful. 

It’s alright. All he has to do is say it.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: graphic descriptions of dead bodies, alcohol, illness, gun violence, blood
> 
> I hope you liked it! This was incredibly tough to write, I hope I did Arthur's and Charles's relationship justice :( Consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed the fic, I love comments with my whole heart!! They inspire me and make all the effort I put into my fics more than worth it.
> 
> Find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/namizaela) :) I tweet a lot about rdr2!!


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